In January B.C. 37 the Triumvirate, which had then expired, was renewed for a period of five years, in spite of a very considerable amount of friction between the happy-go-lucky Antony and the morose Octavian. At length these quarrels were patched up by means of an agreement whereby Antony gave Octavian 130 ships with which to fight Sextus Pompeius, and Octavian handed over some 21,000 legionaries to Antony for his Parthian war. In this agreement it will be observed that Antony, in order to obtain troops, sacrificed the man who had befriended his mother and who had assisted his cause against Octavian at a time when his fortunes were at a low ebb; and it must be presumed, therefore, that his desire to conquer Parthia and to penetrate far into the Orient was now of such absorbing importance to him that all other considerations were abrogated by it. Antony, in fact, enthusiastically contemplating an enlarged eastern empire, desired to have no part in the concerns of the west; and he cared not one jot what fate awaited his late ally, Sextus, who, he felt, was certain in any case ultimately to go down before Octavian. He was beginning, indeed, to trouble himself very little in regard to Octavian either; for he now seems to have thought that, when the Orient had been conquered and consolidated, he would probably be able to capture the Occident also from the cruel hands of his unpopular rival with little difficulty. Two years previously he had found it necessary to keep himself on friendly terms with Octavian at all costs, and for this reason he had abandoned Cleopatra with brutal callousness. Now, however, his position was such that he was able to defy Cæsar’s nephew, and the presentation to him of the 130 ships was no more than a shrewd business deal, whereby he had obtained a new contingent of troops. One sees that his thoughts were turning once more towards the Queen of Egypt; and he seems at this time to have recalled to mind both the pleasure afforded him by her brilliant society and the importance to himself of the position which she held in eastern affairs. The Egyptian navy was large and well-equipped, and the deficiency in his own fleet due to his gift to Octavian might easily be made good by the Queen.
In the autumn of B.C. 37 these considerations bore their inevitable fruit. On his way to Corfu, in pursuit of his Parthian schemes, he came to the conclusion that he would once and for all cut himself off from Rome until that day when he should return to it as the earth’s conqueror. He therefore sent his wife Octavia back to Italy, determined never to see her again; and at the same time he despatched a certain Fonteius Capito to Alexandria to invite Cleopatra to meet him in Syria. Octavia was a woman of extreme sweetness, goodness, and domesticity. Her gentle influence always made for peace; and her invariable good behaviour and meekness must have almost driven Antony crazy. No doubt she wanted to make his clothes for him, as she had made those of her brother; and she seems always to have been anxious to bring before his notice, in her sweet way, the charms of old-fashioned, respectable, family life, a condition which absolutely nauseated Antony. She now accepted her marching orders with a wifely meekness which can hardly command one’s respect; and in pathetic obedience she returned forthwith to Rome. I cannot help thinking that if only she had now shown some spirit, and had been able to substitute energy for sweetness in the movements of her mind, the history of the period would have been entirely altered.
It must surely be clear to the impartial reader that Antony’s change of attitude was due more to political than to romantic considerations.[93] We have heard so much of the arts of seduction practised by Cleopatra that it is not easy at first to rid the mind of the traditional interpretation of this reunion; and we are, at the outset, inclined to accept Plutarch’s definition of the affair when he tells us that “Antony’s passion for Cleopatra, which better thoughts had seemed to have lulled and charmed into oblivion, now gathered strength again, and broke into flame; and like Plato’s restive and rebellious horse of the human soul, flinging off all good and wholesome counsel, and fairly breaking loose, he sent Fonteius Capito to bring her into Syria.” But it is to be remembered that this “passion” for the Queen had not been strong enough to hold him from marrying Octavia a few months after he had left the arms of Cleopatra; and now three and a half years had passed since he had seen the Queen,—a period which, to a memory so short as Antony’s, constituted a very complete hiatus in this particular love-story. So slight, indeed, was his affection for her at this time that, in speaking of the twins with which she had presented him, he made the famous remark already quoted, that he had no intention of confining his hopes of progeny to any one woman, but, like his ancestor Hercules, he hoped to let nature take her will with him, the best way of circulating noble blood through the world being thus personally to beget in every country a new line of kings. Antony doubtless looked forward with youthful excitement to a renewal of his relations with the Queen, and, to some extent, it may be true that he now joyously broke loose from the gentle, and, for that reason, galling, bonds of domesticity; but actually he purposed, for political reasons, to make a definite alliance with Cleopatra, and it is unreasonable to suppose that any flames of ungoverned passion burnt within his jolly heart at this time.
On Cleopatra’s side the case was somewhat different. The stress of bitter experience had knocked out of her all that harum-scarum attitude towards life which had been her marked characteristic in earlier years; and she was no longer able to play with her fortune nor to romp through her days as formerly she had done. Antony, whom in her way she had loved, had cruelly deserted her, and now was asking for a renewal of her favours. Could she believe (for no doubt such was his excuse) that his long absence from her and his marriage to another woman were purely political manœuvres which had in no way interfered with the continuity of his love for her? Could she put her trust in him this second time? Could she, on the other hand, manage her complicated affairs without him? Evidently he was now omnipotent in the East; Parthia was likely to go down before him; and Octavian’s sombre figure was already almost entirely eclipsed by this new Dionysos, save only in little Italy itself. Would there be any hope of enlarging her dominions, or even of retaining those she already possessed, without his assistance? Such questions could only have one solution. She must come to an absolutely definite understanding with Antony, and must make a binding agreement with him. In a word, if there was to be any renewal of their relationship, he must marry her. There must be no more diplomatic manœuvring, which, to her, meant desertion, misery, and painful anxiety. He must become the open enemy of Octavian, and, with her help, must aim at the conquest both of the limitless East and of the entire West. He must act in all things as the successor of the divine Julius Cæsar, and the heir to their joint power must be Cæsar’s son, the little Cæsarion, now a growing boy of over ten years of age.
With this determination fixed in her mind she accepted the invitation presented to her by Fonteius Capito, and set sail for Syria. A few weeks later, towards the end of the year B.C. 37, she met Antony in the city of Antioch; and at once she set herself to the execution of her decision. History does not tell us what passed between them at their first interviews; but it may be supposed that Antony excused his previous conduct on political grounds, and made it clear to the Queen that he now desired a definite and lasting alliance with her; while Cleopatra, on her part, intimated her willingness to unite herself with him, provided that the contract was made legal and binding on both sides.
The fact that she obtained Antony’s consent to an agreement which was in every way to her advantage, not only shows what a high value was set by Antony upon Egypt’s friendship at this time, but it also proves how great were her powers of persuasion. It must be remembered that Cleopatra had been for over three years a wronged woman, deserted by her lover, despairing of ever obtaining the recognition of her son’s claims upon Rome, and almost hopeless even of retaining the independence of Egypt. Now she had the pluck to demand from him all manner of increased rights and privileges and the confirmation of all her dynastic hopes; and, to her great joy, Antony was willing to accede to her wishes. I have already shown that he did not really love her with a passion so deep that his sober judgment was obscured thereby, and the agreement is therefore to be attributed more to the Queen’s shrewd bargaining, and to her very understandable anxiety not to be duped once more by her fickle lover. She must have worked upon Antony’s feelings by telling him of her genuine distress; and at the same time she must warmly have confirmed his estimate of Egypt’s importance to him at this juncture.
The terms of the agreement appear to me to have been as follows:—
Firstly, it seems to have been arranged that a legal marriage should be contracted between them according to Egyptian custom. We have already seen how, many years previously, Julius Cæsar had countenanced a law designed to legalise his proposed marriage with Cleopatra, by the terms of which he would have been able to marry more than one wife;[94] and Antony now seems to have based his attitude upon a somewhat similar understanding. The marriage would not be announced to the Senate in Rome, since he intended no longer to regard himself as subject to the old Roman Law in these matters; but in Egypt it would be accepted as a legal and terrestrial confirmation of the so-called celestial union of B.C. 40.
Secondly, it was agreed that Antony should not assume the title of King of Egypt, but should call himself Autocrator—i.e., “absolute ruler,” of the entire East. The word αὐτοκράτωρ was a fair Greek equivalent of the Roman Imperator, a title which, it will be remembered, was made hereditary in Julius Cæsar’s behalf, and which was probably intended by him to obtain its subsequent significance of “Emperor.” Antony would not adopt the title of βασιλεύς or rex, which was always objectionable to Roman ears; nor was the word Imperator quite distinguished enough, since it was held by all commanders-in-chief of Roman armies. But the title Autocrator was significant of omnipotence; and it is to be noted that from this time onwards every “Pharaoh” of Egypt was called by that name, which in hieroglyphs reads Aut’k’r’d’r. Antony also retained for the time being his title of Triumvir.
Thirdly, Antony probably promised to regard Cæsarion, the son of Cleopatra and Julius Cæsar, as the rightful heir to the throne;[95] and he agreed to give his own children by the Queen the minor kingdoms within their empire.